


Softly, On a Dream

by miasmata



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Gen, he's been carrying me for 40+ hours his back hurts, let felix take a break, moderate spoilers for lions, seteth is felix's new dad and i dont make the rules except for this time right now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 08:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20206579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miasmata/pseuds/miasmata
Summary: The war has ended and Felix has found a purpose outside of the blade. Then, he wakes up.





	Softly, On a Dream

The war was over.

The details were hazy, but Felix knew it was over. They had won. Yes - of course. The Kingdom had been restored. The crusade against the Empire was through. How had it ended? He struggled to remember. The people, yes - Dimitri was there. Edelgard, of course. But the battlefield, the soldiers that surrounded them - Felix couldn't put a name to any of them.

It didn't matter, he supposed. This had always been their war. They had gone and gotten everyone caught up in it. It ended as he knew it always would. Bloody. Sword in hand. Beyond that he didn't care to recall.

There was a contentment that weighed heavily in the pit of his stomach. He was almost surprised to feel it there. He had worried he would be lost without a war to fight. After all, with no need for a sword, what was the use for him?

That wasn't something that worried him anymore. The sun was warm on his back. In his arms he cradled sweet smelling firewood. Freshly chopped. Wood dust clung to the arms of his overcoat. A blade swayed at his hip with every step. It was a weight that grounded him. Something he still wasn't used to being without. The wrong tool for cutting firewood, to be certain, but Flayn so liked it when he made a show of slicing firewood with a sword.

Flayn - surely he was going to meet with her. The snow has melted from the path he walked, leaving a verdant swathe for him to blindly follow. Flowers pushed up from the ground. White and yellow - Faerghus wildflowers, ones that he had know since birth, reaching up to frame his feet and guide him to... It must be too early for the pale blue ones. Those had always been his favorites.

Was it too early, though? What day was it? What month, even? Felix couldn't recall that, either.

Felix wouldn't dwell on that long either. He didn't find that much bothered him beyond a momentary longing for a bundle of blue flowers. Even the flowers were forgotten when a stone cottage came into view around a bend of trees. Smoke curled from the roof. The familiarity was bone deep. A smile splits his face. Yes - this was where he was meant to be.

Felix headed up the path. He tapped the toe of his boots one by one on the ground, knocking off the slush that clung to him from his trek. He peered through the window.

His father sat at the table, a warm mug of cider in his hand. He laughed. His clouded breath joined the steam of his drink, swirling above his head. Beside him, Glenn regaled him with some tale he couldn't quite hear.

It felt right - the two of them in this little cottage, (His cottage? Felix couldn't remember that either) waiting for his return. A hunting trip. Of course. That explained the spears propped up by the door. Boar hunting. He remembered now. He almost had to laugh. How could he have forgotten?

Felix nudged the door open with his shoulder. "I'm here," he said.

Obviously he was there. He knew how his father and brother could be, though. So absorbed in their conversation they would fail to notice if the king were to walk in, royal announcement and all. Felix couldn't find it in himself to be irritated with them. He couldn't even force himself to stop smiling. He looked to the fireplace and found it already burned with fresh logs.

"What use was this, then?" Felix asked. He jostled the firewood in his arms. He wouldn't stow it away until they acknowledged him, until they let him tease them. Sending him off on a useless errand again. It served them right. They wouldn't be rid of him so easily again.

The laughter stopped. Their smiles dropped.

"Felix," his father said. "Do you join us?"

He should. There was a mug sitting opposite of Glenn waiting for him. The steam curled towards him. He could smell the spices from the doorway.

"Come on," Glenn said. He rapped his knuckles against the table. An invitation. "Take a seat. Your work is done."

Is it? Felix couldn't remember. He looked down at himself. The firewood was gone from his arms. His sword, too, has vanished from his side. The contentment in his stomach rose to his chest and swirled into panic.

Felix's head snapped up. No light streamed into the cabin any longer. The pleasant smell had curdled into the stench of rot. Glenn was gone. On the table lay a gleaming, spotless set of armor. The corpse inside it was beyond recognition and yet Felix knew. Just as he had years ago, he knew.

"Felix," His father choked out. Pained, wet with blood - the way he had sounded when he died. His father clung to him while he died - him, not Dimitri. His fingers clawed into him. Felix felt the chill spread through his entire body. Blood bubbled to his father's lips. Don't look, Felix begged himself.

"Felix," he gurgled. Felix looked down. He saw the wound again. The blood welling in his father's chest. The blade stuck through him. His father’s arms drew him closer. Felix couldn’t breathe. There was no air in his lungs to scream. The blade piercing his father jammed into his chest.

"Join us."

***

Felix jolted awake, his mouth dry and his sheets soaked with sweat. A searing pain pierced through one side of his chest and dragged, slow and torturous, out the other. He pressed his fist to the center of his bandages and pushed. The pain turned into something dull and buzzing. It centered him.

His exhaled ragged and slow. He was fine. The cabin was gone. He was in the infirmary at the monastery - yes. That was right. They had run into trouble on their way back. A beast had thought to make him into dinner. He remembered thrusting his sword deep into its chest. Claws bashing bluntly against his side at first and then raking down his shoulder. His body twisted and fell into the mud. There was yelling from some indeterminate source. And now - he was here.

The war raged on. Father and Glenn were still gone.

He was fine.

Slowly, he laid himself back down.

Goddess, help him. He was surely losing his mind. If he started seeing ghosts like that fool Dimitri he would need to pick out who to strike him down now, while he still had the presence of mind.

Felix covered his eyes with a hand. If he closed them too long he feared he would see them again. To be so rattled by a dream - it made him feel so pathetic. He dragged his hand down his face. It came away damp. With sweat or with tears, he didn’t care to know. Felix picked the sheets up from his lap and drew them back to his chest. His body protested even that movement.

"Oh! You are awake!"

Felix swore under his breath. Had he been so distracted he couldn’t hear the footsteps of another? Especially one such as Flayn. He kept his eyes shut and tried to pretend as though he had made no noise at all.

"I had heard something and -- are you well? Shall I fetch Professor Manuela?"

Felix still refused to open his eyes. "Where is my sword?"

He could hear the incredulous expression Flayn was making in the scoff that escaped her.

"An infirmary is no place for a blade. I suspect it was taken to the armory. But --"

Felix rolled out of his cot, all thoughts of lying there, restless, pulled from his head. He stumbled on his feet. Flayn's hand braced on his arm, light, but insistently urging him back towards his bed.

"Please," she said. "Your wounds have been closed, but if there is any pain that lingers then you must rest."

His shirt and overcoat were neatly folded on the chair drawn up to his bedside. He sat back onto the cot. He saw Flayn's face light up from the corner of his eye. He watched it fall when he reached for his clothing. Another dagger worked its way between his ribs. Another sharp pang to be worked away by the knuckles he pressed into his chest.

"Please!" She repeated. She put her hand on his and pushed it down. Felix bristled.

"So, you're Manuela's protege now?" Felix snapped. He snatched his hand back and flung his tunic haphazardly over his head. He tried to pull an arm through. It hitched when he raised it. Flayn shifted beside him, her voice warning him to be cautious. After a moment’s struggle, he wrested the shirt from over his head and flung it back to the chair.

Felix dropped his head into his hands. The bed dipped beside him. They sat in silence.

When the birds began to chirp and the darkness grew lighter, Flayn finally lifted herself from his shoulder. She clasped her hands in front of herself, playing with her fingers.

"Your friends are worried for you. If you wish for solitude, I will not tell them you have woken yet,” she tells him in that quiet space. She would not raise her eyes from the floor. Felix wouldn’t, either.

"Good."

"But Felix -"

"Didn't you say I need rest?"

Flayn squared her shoulders. She stood pin straight, the tension in the room drawing her up and making her seem taller. She took a deep breath and raised her eyes to him.

"Very well."

She shut the door softly behind her and Felix was alone once again.

***

His room became a revolving door of guests. The sun was hardly up for a few minutes before he heard Sylvain (because you always heard Sylvain before you saw him) barreling down the path to the infirmary. Led by Flayn. The glare he sent her way was nothing short of withering. Manuela had yet to rise from her evening out and in her Sylvain was eager to give him the details of how he had been saved.

Felix knew the part about the professor vaulting onto the beasts back and using the Sword of the Creator as reins to guide it away from everyone was likely an exaggeration. He gave his friend a dry ‘really’ for his trouble anyway.

Annette and Mercedes came by to pay their, as Annette had so tactfully called it, respects. He had to remind her that while he may look it, he wasn’t quite dead. Somehow, it had ended with Annette yelling at him, Mercedes tugging her away insistently. She waved, smiled, told him if there was anything he needed, anything at all --

Felix heard that spiel again from Ingrid, and then again from Dimitri. He found it difficult to believe that they hadn’t conspired about this beforehand but Sylvain (who hadn’t left his side since he had arrived) insisted that they were all just glad he was all right. Another pang slipped between his ribs. This one festered. The faces of his friends - smiling, angry, relieved - they each twisted the knife in different, but no less sharp ways.

The burden of keeping conversation with him was not Sylvain’s alone for much longer. Sometime after breakfast had been called for, Manuela had finally made her way to the infirmary. She regaled him with a map of his injuries. Felix didn’t care much for the story. They were extensive, but as he had received care exceptionally fast, he was fine. That was all that mattered. She said he was fine.

"Who would have thought one as surly as you would be so popular?" Manuela teased him after Sylvain had been so kind as to recount his visitors for her. Her hands busied themselves with replacing the bandages at his chest. Despite her personality, she was clinical in her work. Firm. Hands never as soft as one might think. She tied his bandages and her hands left him promptly.

"It's part of his charm," Sylvain said. He grinned down at Felix, surely hoping to catch an eyeroll or a scoff. Felix only stared straight ahead, his face impassive as the stone his eyes bored into.

They carried on at his expense. Felix turned his dream over and over in his mind. To think he had been so taken with it. Laughable. It was a dream. The gleam of Glenn’s armor and the decay of his corpse, his father’s dying moments finally meant for him and not for another - it was a dream. He would never have to experience those again. He couldn’t torture himself with it. He couldn’t afford that luxury. They were gone. He was here. They were gone and he was still -

"Hey," Sylvain said. Soft. Firm, but ginger. The serious tone drew Felix's eye. Sylvain had squatted down by his bedside, bracing himself against his cot with a forearm. He held up a length of cord in his hand. "You need me to -?"

Now Felix gave him a scoff. He swiped the cord from Sylvain's hand.

"Please," Felix griped. "I'm not so feeble I can't tie my own hair."

He gathered his hair, but when he reached up to secure it he found the same hitch in his shoulder. It shook as he pushed it higher. The sharp stab of panic returned to his chest. It flickered through his eyes. He strained against his muscles, the burn of pain radiating from his shoulder blade. Manuela bit out his name chidingly.

"You're going to stress your injury, and then you'll really be in trouble," Manuela said. Felix tossed the hair tie to the foot of his bed. It made it to his knees. Useless.

Manuela drew the chair next to his cot up closer and set his clothes at his feet. She plucked the hair tie from his knees and laid it gingerly atop the pile.

"You said I was fine," Felix ground out. The fear that seized him squeezed tighter.

"No," Manuela corrected sternly. "I said you will be fine. Perhaps your hearing was injured as well."

Manuela attended to him for the rest of the day. She finally shooed Sylvain out when his passes became too salacious even for her taste. Felix knew - and he had a feeling that Manuela knew, as well, that it was for his benefit rather than for Sylvain’s own amusement.

“You have exceptional friends,” Manuela said, peering at him from the corner of her eye while she mixed some godawful tincture she was sure to cram down his throat.

Felix only scowled. “I thought I could eat solid food.”

Manuela set the glass down harder than necessary on the little table beside him. “It’s a wonder you keep them. You know - considering how dreadful a listener you are. Drink.”

“I hear fine.”

“Hearing and listening are two separate things, dear. Drink.”

Felix choked it down. Manuela proved to be more agreeable after that. She stopped pestering him about his shortcomings and started pestering him about all his ‘finer qualities’. Felix could not have agreed quicker when she offered to fetch lunch for them. Her offer to eat together was both not an offer at all and something that Felix decided wouldn’t be happening. He couldn’t handle any more idle chatter about 'oh, you would look so handsome with a smile, Felix,' or 'it's a shame about your leg - you have the perfect body for dancing! Not to worry; I'll take care of everything'.

He slipped out the window the moment she was gone from the room. Leg be damned. It was his chest that was the true issue. It hadn't stopped feeling like there was a blade jammed between his ribs since he woke. Yet still, every time he pressed his knuckles to the bandages, they came away dry. Still, Manuela told him that injury was all but gone.

Felix crept along the monastery grounds. His time as a student had prepared him for this. There were countless times he and Sylvain had gone sneaking about the grounds after dark. Now, as a man, he knew the postings of each guard, the routines of the soldiers and his friends. Avoiding them would be easy.

Though judging by the distant yelling and the sudden rush of running, he had already been discovered missing. That meant, at least, that the armory had emptied out. He had no use for the cloak he had momentarily borrowed to hide his identity.

He found his sword nearly instantly, the pull of it magnetic. His hand curled around the hilt. He was aware of the familiar shadow that fell across the doorway. Tall, deceptively broad - and that rich green hair that would give away Seteth anywhere.

“You get less subtle each time,” Felix warned him. His sword felt heavy in his hand. He unsheathed it. His practice swing was heavy. Stilted. Restrained by his damnable arm.

“You’ve caused quite the stir, you know. Half the monastery is searching for you.”

“And the other half?”

Seteth shrugged. He made no move to leave the door. “They likely think it best to stay out of your way.”

“Wise,” Felix snorted. He sheathed the blade again. The training grounds would likely be too flooded with people. He could go outside the monastery walls for a bit. It would take them longer to find him there. “When did you become a fool?”

Seteth blocked his path still. Felix turned his face up to him.

“When did you? The armory was not a wise place to hide,” he advised. “If you didn’t wish to be found, you could have chosen -”

“I don’t care if they find me,” Felix said. “Move.”

Seteth didn’t seem particularly impressed. He never had been one to be moved by intimidation - much less Felix’s attempt at it.

“Ashe had brought you a book to pass the time.”

The knife in his chest twisted. “I told you to move.”

“He’s in quite a state. He is also an exceptional tracker, I’m certain you well know. It won’t be long before he leads Sylvain and Ingrid -”

The pain was sharp; stabbing into him deeper and deeper with each beat of his heart.

“What do I care?” Felix snapped. His hands clutched his sword tightly in front of him, knuckles white, the shaking only barely obscured. "Let them fret; I'm no child. Their worry means nothing to me."

Seteth leveled him with a look that only fueled his anger; pity. The pain in his chest quickened again. His shoulders hitched.

“I don’t think that you believe that. I think that you care very much.”

“I don’t care for your thoughts.” Felix snapped. He pushed passed Seteth, slamming his shoulder against his.

Seteth smiled. “I don’t think that I believe that, either.”


End file.
